Newswise — Josephine "Jody" Olsen, deputy director of the Peace Corps, will address over 800 graduates at Michigan Technological University May 5 and receive an Honorary Doctorate in Sustainable International Development.
Other honorees include Harvard biomedical engineering professor David Edwards, who graduated from Michigan Tech in 1983 and will receive the university's Melvin Calvin Medal of Distinction; and Pedro Ortega Romero, president of the University of Sonora, in Mexico, who will receive an Honorary Doctorate in Engineering.
As the deputy director of the Peace Corps, Olsen supports strengthening the recruitment of older volunteers, measuring the impact of the Peace Corps and helping other countries promote volunteerism among their own people.
Olsen started her career with the Peace Corps as a volunteer in 1966. From 1981 to 1984, she served as regional director in North Africa, the Near East, Asia and the Pacific. As chief of staff from 1989 to 1992, she helped to expand the agency's work to 25 new countries after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Olsen then served as senior vice president of the Academy for Educational Development, a large international organization, and served as the executive director for the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, the agency responsible for managing the Fulbright Senior Scholar Program. President George W. Bush appointed Olsen deputy director of the Peace Corps in 2002.
Michigan Tech professor Blair Orr, coordinator for the university's Loret Miller Ruppe Master's International Program in Forestry, first recommended Olsen as commencement speaker.
Michigan Tech is home to one of the largest Master's International Peace Corps programs in the country. In addition to the forestry program, the university has three unique master's international programs, in science education, disaster mitigation and civil and environmental engineering.
The university provides the Peace Corps with a particularly valuable stream of volunteers. "Michigan Tech educates people in what the Peace Corps calls 'scarce skills'," Orr said. Volunteers with training in fields such as forestry and engineering are in short supply. "The Peace Corps has said if they could get twice as many foresters to apply, they would take them," he said.
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